High-proficient Swedish users of L2 French and Spanish were compared with native speakers of French, Spanish and Swedish with regard to how the syntactic peripheries in natural colloquial speech are structured. Two different though interrelated aspects were included: thus a cross-linguistic analysis comparing the three native speaker groups is combined with an analysis addressing the question of the upper limits of L2 acquisition. All left peripheral (LP) and right peripheral (RP) constituents of a corpus of 110,759 words were classified in a taxonomy relying both on syntactic and functional-pragmatic criteria. The cross-linguistic analysis showed that French and Spanish L1 speakers produced significantly longer LP sequences than the Swedish L1 speakers, who, in turn, put conspicuously more weight on the RP. Significant differences between the three languages were also found with regard to several LP and RP constituent categories. The L2 acquisition-oriented analysis showed that with few exceptions the high-proficient L2 users behaved like L1 users. Although a few interlanguage-related phenomena could be observed, no instances of any clear transfer from the speaker's L1 appeared in either L2 speaker group.

Cette étude longitudinale contribue aux recherches sur l’ acquisition d’ une langue seconde (L2) dans le contexte de séjour linguistique à l'étranger (Study Abroad), où l’ on s’ intéresse de plus en plus à comprendre comment les facteurs non-linguistiques interagissent avec le développement linguistique. Elle étudie le rôle de la nature du réseau social (au sens sociologique) de l’ apprenant dans le développement de la production orale en français L2 chez deux étudiants suédois qui passent un semestre en France et dont les niveaux d’ intégration dans la communauté de la langue cible (LC) s’ opposent. L’ analyse suggère qu’ un réseau social plus riche en relations en LC confère un avantage supplémentaire en ce qui concerne le développement du répertoire des expressions polylexicales (EPL) de l’ apprenant, mais non pas le développement de l’ exactitude grammaticale, de la diversité lexicale et de l’ usage des marqueurs discursifs. Ainsi, l’ étude vient partiellement à l’ appui de la supposition que le réseau social de l’ apprenant explique la variation individuelle dans le développement linguistique.

This article examines linguistic complexity in the noun phrase in spoken L1 and L2 French. Research on linguistic complexity in L2 has often concentrated on syntactic complexity, subordination in particular. In this study, we focus on syntactic complexity at the phrasal level, i.e. in the noun phrase, following the assumption put forward by Norris and Ortega (2009: 564) that internal NP complexity provides an important measure of very advanced learners. The present study examines pre- and post-modification in the noun phrase in the oral production of very advanced non-native speakers (NNS) and native speakers (NS) elicited through an on-line retelling of a clip from Modern Times. The results confirm our main hypothesis, that there are differences between NS and NNS: NS use more complex NPs, NPs with a higher mean number of words and more NPs with multiple modifiers.

This volume investigates cultural migrants: people who, from their own free will, move to another country because of their interest in the target language and culture. Chapters include studies on cultural migrants acquiring French, Italian, Spanish and English and consider linguistic, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects of language acquisition. Cultural migrants have social and psychological advantages when acquiring a second language as adults, and the study of their linguistic knowledge and production increases our understanding of the possibilities and limits of L2 ultimate attainment. The work thus fills a gap in our understanding of high-level proficiency and will be of interest to researchers working in the field of SLA, as well as to social scientists studying the relationship between language, culture and integration.